Today, a substantial segment of the public accomplishes a significant portion of their daily and weekly activities on a computer system. Furthermore, due to the wide variety of computer software available today, in many instances computer users accomplish all of the diverse tasks on a single, stand-alone or networked, personal computer. These tasks include, for example, accounting, wordprocessing, note taking, calendar keeping, inter-office message communication, etc. Performance of these tasks is facilitated by wordprocessing, spreadsheet, database search, and email, etc. applications programs. It is desirable for these applications to be easily accessed by the user and displayed upon the graphical user interface (GUI) in a manner such that a user can easily locate an application program and related files for purposes of performing a task.
Enhancements to, and standardization of, the interface between operating systems and applications programs have facilitated supporting a wide variety of applications on a single, universal GUI platform. One particular GUI, referred to herein as a "desktop", incorporates a desktop motif into a user interface. The desktop interface displays a variety of graphic representations corresponding to a diverse set of computer resources relating to the tasks performed by a user and the tools for accomplishing the tasks.
The desktop interface displays graphic representations corresponding to computer resources (e.g., files, folders, application programs) accessed by a user via a user controlled selection device such as a mouse, light pen or keyboard. A user need not be constantly burdened with remembering the location of an application, document or file within a computer system directory hierarchy since the most often used computer resources, or groups of resources, are displayed on the desktop GUI.
Like a physical office desktop, the most often used resources in a desktop GUI may be placed by a user in the most easily accessed locations. Like a physical office desktop wherein files, folders, books and papers are rearranged during the course of a day, the graphical representations on the desktop interface are moved by a user of the computer system to other parts of a display screen during the course of a day or work session.
Unfortunately, just like an actual physical office desktop, the desktop GUI platform becomes disorganized over the coarse of the day as a consequence of the moving of the graphical representations. A physical desktop cannot be re-arranged in a neat manner with a snap of a finger, however, it is possible for a computer system to re-arrange graphic images on a display screen. In the past, certain GUIs have moved icons into nearest grid positions on a single frame encompassing the entire desktop in response to a user command. This known arrangement system was based entirely upon current positions o f the graphic images on the display screen.